{"id":31620,"date":"2024-02-19T08:00:53","date_gmt":"2024-02-19T06:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=31620"},"modified":"2024-07-19T11:20:15","modified_gmt":"2024-07-19T09:20:15","slug":"the-oath-of-cyriac-recovery-or-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/the-oath-of-cyriac-recovery-or-spin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oath of Cyriac<\/em>: Recovery or Spin?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Olivier Bourgeois\u2019 film <\/span>The Oath of Cyriac<\/span><\/i> (2021), is a docudrama, telling the gripping story of how a small group of archaeologists, museum curators, government officials and volunteers, undertook the monumental task of preserving the Aleppo collection for future generations.<\/span><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Arie Amaya-Akkermans<\/span><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to overestimate the importance of Syria for archaeology. The country sits at the heart of the Fertile Crescent, stretching from Egypt to Iraq, one of the regions where archaeologists still believe that modern humans first settled down in cities, developed agriculture and domesticated animals at the end of the Neolithic. Europeans began excavating in the country in the middle of the 19th century, when Austen Henry Layard conducted a few excavations in the Lower Khabur, in the Jazira region between the Euphates and the Tigris. Since then, the wealth of archaeological discoveries in the Syrian plains has been seemingly infinite, with over 150 excavations covering the full range of time from the Paleolithic to the Islamic Middle Ages. In 1994, <\/span>Yale archaeologist Harvey Weiss<\/span><\/a> wrote that \u201cthe pace of Syrian archaeological research continues to accelerate annually.\u201d He presented reports of over 30 active field excavations, but there was a peak around the year 2000, following political changes in the region.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet up to 2011, there were still important sites being excavated, such as Tell Brak in the Upper Khabur (as I reported previously for <\/span>TMR<\/span><\/a>), where archaeologists uncovered evidence of the first civil war in history, in the 4th millennium BCE. All excavations were suspended after the onset of the civil war. The dig house at Tell Brak was looted and the site has changed hands between different factions. Unsurprisingly, Syria has been at the heart of a heated debate about the destruction of cultural heritage since the war began, more than a decade ago. It\u2019s not only the widely publicized destruction of the Temple of Bel and the Roman amphitheater in Palmyra\u00a0 by ISIS in 2015, but two interrelated effects of escalating violence: The massive urban destruction caused by the fighting between rebels and the Assad government troops for territorial dominance, resulting in unprecedented damage to archaeological sites and museums, for which each side blamed the other, and the ongoing looting of antiquities from the country.<\/span><\/p>\n